UNDER LIBRA

UNDER LIBRA

balance
temperance
transcendence

I check my calendar
assiduously
wondering when they
might
    reappear

            (if
they ever
did appear)

so much bad substance
dark matter festering
         this many a day

coming to the surface
     bursting every
tectonic
plate

hot slick sludge volcano
whose pyroclastic flow
             covering in
magma
    whole wealth of detail

that it
    is turning out to be
this change
of epoch morning

whilst I spin my roladex top database
like an insane creature trapped
in the winking
    headlights of extinction

searching for a theoretician
(any still standing
         though
tossed
aside)

can explain
   this shit to me

balance transcendence  temperance

I hold off
on judgement

(sum
    of all my fears)
  

FAT

FAT

soon, everything
will have had
enough of us

the planet
will refuse to look us
in the face

species by species
they
       die on us
fall
by the wayside

so fat on the proceeds
of this treasure-trove
we have
      allowed ourselves to grow
refuse
    to stop growing

TO EACH OTHER

TO EACH OTHER

clearly
iceberg and
Titanic
were Other
to each other

such a risk
with first
glancing kiss

shatter of the mirror
fragmentation, disintegration

and so much
icy depth, no one
divulged how
quite the abyss
we were talking

quite the overkill
we must suggest when
it is the belief
less than a tablespoonful
will suffice for drowning

but there you are
above the waves
not bobbing
       but floating supremely

clear as royal icing on a cake
(if not clear then
as smooth entirely)

wishing them well
upon their wedding night
(much blessings
             much much blessings)

so much of that
bleak psychoanalysis having
imbibed

         knowing how love
as hubris might just turn out

a smile
     a wave — pun
                        unintended–
a look like that of
that mad German we
do hate
        so because
we owe so much

who dethroned sun-bright Apollo
threw in his
              lot with the god
of drinkers

WICKED WAY

WICKED WAY
“Here we are now
entertain us.”
           Nirvana

a meteorite hits
but its the gods
who are angry

or
doing their
housekeeping
sweeping away
loose stones

an asteroid
does damage
but that’s just
the way
of the Universe
blind chance
completely random

a comet is
on its way
we are

totally
  the target

its just
a quantum tease

wave front possibilities
opting for
          neat solution
to our conundrum

sub-atomic, these devils
set to have their wicked way

CLOUDLESS

CLOUDLESS

a cloudless sky
stopped my scarlet red
Citroen
  to open the farm gate

cannot pretend to
understand the physics of
colour or
   indeed, the physics
of sky
you lost me as soon
as you spoke of wave-lengths
and light diffusion

but here we are (or at least, here
I am, your presence with me
somewhere
  between metaphor and
simple rhetorical gesture)

here we are
as if shielded from
the Universe (which is
the case exactly) virtue of
us being
    (no clouds
to distract me) right
at the epicentre of
a surrounding sphere, looking
out from
inside the skin, the translucent
skin
   of a beautiful blue ball

expanded to a size, a height,
that just works for us perfectly

reminding me
        as this time of ultra
advanced return
of feudalism
              of the music
of the spheres

with all that economy
with all that cosmology

nothing in a million years here close to
      that darkest conclusion

that things beyond this
blue bubble

moving away from us so fast
they are
beyond
all
   Doppler red-
shift
     beyond very
                  speed of light

and
so

back down
       to Earth as always
for
sheer preservation
of sanity, not

        let all this here
overwhelm me

wanting
those clouds back

wanting not to imagine myself
inside the skin
of anything

wanting
to just go
       where it is all heading
commit
to that glow

   light speed beyond
but (blessing of
relatvity) with it

one
    feels

                just
floating

moving in one’s mind
from
      incarnation to
incarnation

no desire
     to be laboured by

understand
the physics at all

OVERKILL

OVERKILL
“Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.”
Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy
(poem on the Peterloo Massacre)

Ah, my beauties
here is poetry
where it has always been

first past the post
(postmodern, pissedmodern,
posttruth, postnuclear,
postapocalyptic, post-
whasoever)

play of language: you realize
of a sudden that deep
down in
    your tin heart
you have to prevent it

look at the danger: exhibit A,
very drowned poet

his young pregnant wife
dreamt the future as monster
private parts monster
(as they all are)
scratching at her window
demanding
       life, consciousness,
not exactly Turing tested but

she scared
the life out of us, this
virgin snake did cosmically,
with what
   ex machina she
duly came up with

such overkill
   need to nip it in the bud
radical danger of metaphor
surely
   needs its own -dectomy

the threat of crucifixion
along every highway
and byway
      resurrected again

something the billboards
really need, are crying out
                                   for

real spectacle
        behind them.

WEREN’T WE?

WEREN’T WE?

weren’t we
supposed to hold
up the mirror
to human nature

not let it fall
splinter, shatter

crash and burn, break
into a billion tiny
diamond-bright pieces

jagged shards, blood
soaked, blood
painted, bloody

never to be fixed
never
       to be returned
never reclaimed
never restored

all those bits of light
dancing in the Sun grotesquely

hold
up the mirror
to human nature

who the fuck, nowhere
near his right mind
came up
     with that idea

(go not pass go
        leave the planet
sail steadfast, venture into the cosmos
               cross
the galaxy

not, never
in a trillion lifetimes

nothing out there
     to mirror what
we
   might well be)

weren’t we?